Article · 13 August 2024

Low Ego Mode

Low Ego Mode is the antidote to the insidious effects of high-ego thinking. Mastering its use at will is a superpower.

Edited image of iOS battery preferences screen

I have to admit something: I have an ego problem. A high ego problem. It's not that I'm overtly arrogant. (So I would hope, at least!) It's that my sense of self leads me astray in insidious ways. It prevents me from seeing the world — and indeed myself — clearly. The antidote to this, I've found, is low ego. In this article, I explain why I've come to think of low ego as an intentional, temporary state of mind, and why it's a superpower to learn how to activate it at will.

First, a disclaimer: Low Ego Mode is a mental tool. Mental tools are heuristics, i.e. mental shortcuts: they simplify complex mental and biochemical processes to enable useful action. For example, I do not need to understand the chemicals released in my brain when I take deep breaths, to benefit from the calming effect of doing so. Tools are action-enabling rather than explanatory. Misusing a mental tool as explanatory leads to reductionism, so it's important to keep this in mind.

What is "high ego"?

High ego means looking at the world through me-tinted glasses. High ego constantly seeks to answer the question: what does this say about me? What will people think of me if I make this choice? What does this mistake say about my abilities? What does my reaction to a perceived slight say about my honour?

High ego is self-judgement on steroids. This is problematic for a number of reasons.

Why is high ego bad?

High ego degrades the quality of my communication. Substance is signal. Ego is noise. By choosing to focus on what a message or action says about me, I necessarily pay less attention to other important aspects of the message. When I'm listening to someone speak or I'm reading an email, high ego means paying less attention to the nuance, alternative interpretations, hidden meanings, and illuminating context embedded in the message. And when I'm the one communicating with someone else, high ego means spending less time crafting the content, phrasing, and delivery of my message to make it as succinct and as effective as possible. 

High ego prevents me from seeing the world as it is. Instead, it makes me see the world as I want it to be. If I'm wearing me-tinted glasses, it's hard to internalise and appreciate ideas and information that challenge my view of myself. When a colleague is giving me hard feedback about a mistake that I made, high ego prevents me from listening to understand. Instead, I listen to respond. I focus on rebuttals that preserve my idea of myself as a "smart" person who "doesn't make these mistakes". Suspending that judgement would allow me to hear the truth in what the colleague is saying. It would give me valuable learnings that could help me avoid repeating the mistake in future.

High ego makes my estimation of my performance inaccurate. When I'm fixated on the positive feedback I received on my work from others — that which feeds my ego — I might easily miss the broader picture. Looking at things more objectively, I would perhaps conclude that I could've done better, or that I was focusing on the wrong task in the first place. Inversely, if I'm fixated on negative feedback, I might easily conclude that everything was terrible. In doing so, I'd miss the value that I created.

It's tempting to think that it's fine to underestimate my performance, as long as I don't overestimate it. That is to say: it's better to err on the side of humility than the side of arrogance. But that misses the point. Truth is valuable. To learn and grow, it's just as important to know what worked as to know what didn't work.

High ego is a barrier to completing "scary" tasks. It goes hand in hand with catastrophising. Catastrophising tells me that the worst will come to pass, and high ego tells me that people will inevitably think the worst of me. Together, they create a barrier to tasks that I perceive to be "scary". Scary is the "insurmountable" blank first page of the document I'm starting to write. Scary is opening and reading an "angry" email. Scary is asking a question which will make me look "foolish". Scary is tackling a previously-postponed task, which will "inevitably" be met with "dire consequences" when I ultimately complete it.

High ego makes me take these questionable "facts" at face value, rather than seeing and challenging the massive assumptions built into them. How often is a blank first page truly insurmountable once I've started writing the first paragraph? Never. How often does an email really turn out to be "angry" once I've re-read it two or three times and realised that it might've been intended with a different tone? Very rarely. How often do people seriously tell me I'm foolish when I ask a question, rather than commend me for asking what everyone was wondering? Never. How often do I complete a postponed task and actually meet the dire consequences I was expecting, rather than receive positive, understanding feedback? Very rarely.

Not to mention the fear of failure. High ego can easily convince me that it's better not to start something, than to start it and fail. If I fail spectacularly, I hurt my idea of myself as a competent person who doesn't make mistakes. And yet failure — especially of the spectacular kind — is a prerequisite for learning.

Fear turns into avoidance. Avoidance turns into productive procrastination, where I keep myself busy with important, worthwhile work, in an attempt to rationalise to myself why I'm avoiding scary tasks. Procrastination fuels more fear. And so the vicious cycle continues.

What is "Low Ego Mode" and why is it the antidote?

Low ego is the opposite of high ego. It means taking off the me-tinted glasses and deemphasising — or preferably ignoring — what something says about me. Low ego is to remove the self from the equation as far as possible.

Low ego is a powerful mindset. It unlocks many benefits and is vastly superior to high ego. There are very few situations in which high ego is truly and sustainably beneficial. Even benefits that are traditionally associated with high ego can be achieved as effectively, if not more effectively, with low ego. For example, I derive self-confidence to speak in front of an audience from psyching myself up. I tell myself that I'm knowledgeable on the subject and that I will receive positive feedback. This is high ego at work. I can achieve the same self-confidence from a different source: not caring at all what the audience will think of me and instead focusing purely on the substance of my message. Arguably, this is a less fragile form of self-confidence and certainly less risky than high-ego self-confidence. It's one thing to psych myself up, but I can easily swing the pendulum too far in the other direction, making me come across as arrogant and closed to feedback.

The ideal is to have low ego all the time, but that is incredibly difficult. We're just not evolutionarily wired for this. With the exception of a few Buddhist monks, who've truly succeeded in letting go of the self, I'm not sure permanent low ego is achievable for any of us. Western society, with its hyper-individualism, certainly doesn't make it any easier for us, either.

The solution is to think of low ego as an intentional, temporary state of mind. We can call this "Low Ego Mode", analogous to Apple devices' "Low Power Mode". In "Low Power Mode", these device temporarily suspend non-vital functions to preserve battery life. Similarly, in "Low Ego Mode", we temporarily suspend our self-judgement to reserve our attention for more valuable matters.

Thinking of "Low Ego Mode" as a temporary state of mind has several benefits. It makes it easier to be intentional about it, because it has a start and a finish. That is to say: it requires explicit activation and deactivation. It allows me to create visible hooks to activate it: I can train myself to think of Low Ego Mode when I see the need for a difficult conversation, when I deal with a task I've previously postponed, or when I need to read or write a stern email. Treating Low Ego Mode as temporary means I can use all kinds of mental and physical tricks to sustain it, because it's a sprint, not a marathon. I explain some of my 'hacks' for activating Low Ego Mode below.

Why is it a superpower to be able to activate Low Ego Mode at will?

Being able to activate Low Ego Mode in a high-ego world means seeing things clearly, when everyone else is struggling to do so. In Low Ego Mode, I can hear things that others can't hear. I can engage with and learn from difficult feedback that others refuse to absorb. I can say things plainly and succinctly, rather than wasting time obsessing over my sense of self. I can increase the bandwidth of my communication, because I'm not wasting it on unnecessary self-judgement, and communicate more efficiently.

Being able to turn on Low Ego Mode to deal with 'scary' tasks means breaking the vicious cycle of avoidance before it even starts. Imagine never having to procrastinate on difficult emails, hard conversations, or blank pages.

It's a game-changer.

How to activate Low Ego Mode

How do I know when to activate Low Ego Mode?

To be able to activate Low Ego Mode, I need to know that I need it. I find that this is often the key stumbling block with mental tools. I can have great heuristics and mental models, but if I don't realise that I need to apply a particular tool in a particular situation, I lose out on its benefits.

Fortunately, it's easy to spot the need for Low Ego Mode, because there are clear physiological signs. When my chest tightens and I inadvertently begin holding my breath at the thought of starting a specific task, or dealing with an issue, I take this as a sign that my mind thinks the task is scary. The same happens if I unexpectedly receive negative feedback, or feel embarrassed, in a conversation. These signs tell me that Low Ego Mode may be required.

How do I complete tasks in Low Ego Mode?

Once I've identified that a task calls for Low Ego Mode, I need to gently push my mind towards suspending self-judgement. I find that I need to combine conscious actions with subtle nudges. 

Consciously, I take a few moments to let go of my ego. I do this by:

1. taking a few long, deep breaths, to actively calm my nervous system and get rid of the fight-or-flight response.
2. looking at myself, and the situation, from the outside, as though I'm a stranger. This helps me create distance from my reactions.
3. explicitly telling myself to ignore any feelings of embarrassment, shame, fear, and loathing, for the duration of Low Ego Mode.

I combine these conscious actions with subtle nudges.

• I turn on one of two "Low Ego Mode" soundscapes that I created with the wonderful MyNoise app. (MyNoise is available on the App Store and Google Play Store and there is also a web version.) For me, the key is to create an ethereal, otherworldly feeling, to pull my mind out of its normal thought patterns.
• Where possible, I go to a different place, e.g. a coffee shop. This change in my environment helps me to pull my mind out of its rut, too.

I keep playing the Low Ego Mode soundscape and stay at the location until I've dealt with the scary task comprehensively. Once I'm done, I switch it off.

What about unexpected situations?

When I'm dealing with a task or situation proactively, I can prepare. By contrast, when something scary does pop up in a conversation completely out of the blue, it requires a more reactive approach. It rarely happens that I face a difficult conversation completely unexpectedly. With meetings, I can prepare beforehand and consider where the conversation might go, against the backdrop of any broader issues. With emails and other written feedback, for example in a client relationship, I can detect that there are problems and try to address these as early as possible.

But when a scary situation does pop up, I can still use the same physiological signs (tight chest, inadvertent breath-holding) to spot the need for Low Ego Mode. And I can still take a few deep breaths, look at myself and the conversation from the outside, and explicitly tell myself to ignore unhelpful feelings.

What happens after Low Ego Mode?

After dealing with a situation in Low Ego Mode, it's important to treat the matter that I dealt with as closed. I often find myself tempted to dwell on the situation and my response, but that's not helpful. I have to trust that I've done my part, and that I need to move on and focus on other things.

To me, Low Ego Mode delivers enduring benefits even after it's done. It brings an immense sense of relief to complete a scary task, especially if it's something that's been on the backburner for a while. And the more I complete scary tasks in Low Ego Mode, the easier it gets to deal with them, and the less scary they are in the first place.